LOUIS PASTEUR

Louis Pasteur is one of the ‘greats’ of science. Countless millions of

people alive today owe their lives to his discoveries.
Pasteur revolutionized chemistry and biology with his discovery of mirror-image
organic molecules, then founded microbiology with his work on fermentation, his
discovery of anaerobic bacteria, and his establishment of the germ theory of
disease. The process he invented to stop foodstuffs going bad, pasteurization, is
still in use worldwide today.
Louis Pasteur was born in the market town of Dole in eastern France on December
27, 1822. His father was Jean-Joseph Pasteur, a decorated former sergeant major in
Napoleon Bonaparte’s army, who now worked as a tanner. His mother was Jeanne-
Etiennette Roqui. Loius had an older sister and two younger sisters. The family
lived modestly.
When Louis was four years old his family moved to the nearby town of Arbois. He
started school aged eight at the École Primaire Arbois – it was actually a single
room in the town hall. He could already read, having been taught by his father. His
teachers rated his childhood academic ability as middling.
In his teenage years Louis received free tutoring from his father’s friend, Buousson
de Mairet, a scholar. With this extra help, Louis began to show a growing
academic ability – he started winning prizes at school – and it increasingly looked
like a degree-level education would be appropriate for him.
His father envisaged his son becoming a respected teacher at a high school.
In addition to his academic prowess, Louis also showed considerable artistic talent,
especially his pastel portraits.
At the end of October 1838, aged 15, Louis Pasteur arrived in Paris, where he was
to live in a dormitory and attend a boarding school – the Institution Barbet – to
prepare him for the École Normale Supérieure in Paris – an elite college – often
called more simply the École Normale or ENS.
Unfortunately Louis was utterly miserable in Paris, missing home terribly. He
lasted a little over two weeks before his father made a long journey and took him
home to Arbois.
In 1839, aged 16, he moved to Besançon, just 30 miles (49 km) from Arbois to
board at the Royal College, a high school. Closer to his hometown, he felt less
homesick, worked very hard, and passed his school diploma exam in 1840. He was
then able to earn money as a teaching assistant at the Royal College.
For two years Pasteur earned money while he improved his academic
qualifications. He then sat the entrance exam for the ENS. He failed. Although he
had prepared for the exam by taking extra lessons in mathematics, physics and
chemistry, he had also spent of lot of his time – too much time – drawing pastel
portraits.
Pasteur worked for another year as a teaching assistant before moving to Paris in
1843 to study at Lycée Saint-Louis, a high school that aimed to get its students into
the ENS. There he won the prize for top physics student and passed the ENS’s
entrance exam with a high rank.
In 1844, aged 21, he entered the École Normale Supérieure. In 1845 he earned his
science degree. In 1846 he placed third in physical sciences in the Agrégation – a
highly prestigious government-run open exam for anyone who wanted to work in
education: following this he was assigned to a high school teaching job in Tournon
– a thought that horrified him.
He wanted to stay in Paris and continue with scientific research and higher-level
teaching.